The White Stripes "Icky Thump" new LP, adventures in mastering: 1" tape breakthrough!

Has he ever used bass guitar on a White

 

Has he ever used bass guitar on a White Stripes record? I haven't heard them all but those I have don't have bass. (I used the word "have" three times in that sentence. )

 

Didn't Seven Nation Army start with a bass riff?

 

Some of the things that sound like a bass are actually guitars. I haven't played this stuff in a while so I don't know that particular track. Maybe it's a Dano or something like that?

 

I've tried before to get into The White Stripes (but haven't). Maybe I'll try again with this new one (this thread's making me optimistic).

 

You should be, I either love it or hate it, but when it's good it's awesome. Huge talent.

 

Nope it's a guitar riff but it sounds very bassy IMO.

 

I heard it was a regular guitar played through an effects box to lower the pitch a few octaves.

But yeah, before Elephant, the White Stripes did not use any bass guitar or bass guitar-sounds at all.

 

Thanks.

 

Steve - speaking of new albums, are you mastering the new Rush one coming out on vinyl from Rhino?

 

Cool story! Cant wait to hear it. I doubt there will be any bass on this album either...which I can live with. That octave-lowering fuzz effect for guitar sounds great to me, and its only used when effective. Otherwise I think its fine to leave it out and focus on those amazing guitar and drum tones.

 

Nope, the cutting computer (the device that decides how wide to make the grooves) got the digital signal first. The cutterhead got the analog signal last.

 

I'd have to find one of these tapes (my dad had some classical music on XDR tapes), but to the best of my recollection, it WAS a one inch master(and said so in the cassette blurb), which wouldn't have been two track, but four track, which we know has been around since the '60's. 2 stereo tracks going one way, 2 going the other way and the bin loop duplicates everything in one direction, thus copying "both sides at once." Also based on my recollection, which I hope is okay, the heads on bin duplicators have extended frequency response capabilities, being based on analog head technology developed by Keith Johnson of Reference Recordings. When he used to work in analog, he had a custom tape machine that had a very wide frequency response and very good signal to noise ratio. The XDR blurb didn't mention duplication speed, IIRC.


P.S. Oh yeah, I'm really looking forward to this White Stripes LP.

P.P.S. Day and date, dammit!

 

should be about June 20th right?

 

That's what I meant!

Isn't it hard finding the right words to explain all of this?

------------------------

As for the White Stripes, a couple of years before, I just recall reading how people didn't like them. Then I got th hear Seven Nation Army on the radio last Christmas, and I love it! I heard this new song and it's great! I'm looking forward to this vinyl LP!

You know, maybe the record industry has found the CD's replacement...the vinyl LP!

 

Cheers, Pinknik. I've spoken to an engineering colleague who remembers XDR being introduced - he managed to get onto a promotional visit to the tape duplicating plant at Swindon, such was EMI's pride in their investment at the time.

He seems to recall it was 1" quarter-track at 7.5ips: the 1/8" pancake would run at 60ips with the duplicating loop spinning round at 240ips. He said the major advantage to XDR was that Dolby noise reduction finally stood half a chance of being decoded anywhere near correctly. (The 1" loop was pre-emphasised with Dolby, which is where the extended HF would come in handy.)

Apparently, managers spent months going over the effects on profit margins garnered by switching to Chrome tape. Companies like A&M had been producing pre-recorded cassettes on Chrome for years; neither of us think EMI actually committed themselves to Chrome.

The main problem with using 1" tape in bin duplicators, apparently, is that the tape had to be loaded into the machine with meticulous care, making sure that the tape had absolute contact with the guides throughout, as its tendency to "scrunch" across its width at high speeds was a much greater risk than with 1/4".

 

My first album was released on vinyl and XDR cassette. The criteria put forth by Wakefield in Phoenix (who did XDRs for Capitol) was the master tape had to be at least 1/4" at 30ips or 1/2" at 15 ips. My masters were 1/4" at 15 ips but they insisted that (in this rare instance) the sound was worthy. I was very happy with that compliment. Those cassettes sounded great and I still have a bunch of them.

 

Those are standard master tape requirements. But they make a duplication master from your master tape. And THIS is what creates a big problem for Steve! He has to sift through a bunch of tapes that all say "MASTER" to find the right one. Some of them are duplication masters, cutting masters, saftey masters, the masters master...

The reason those cassette duplicating plants want high speed masters is because of noise. Cassettes are noisy enough as it is, and if you have a hissy master, you are putting hiss onto an allready hissy format!

 

I know what you're saying, Joe. I knew why they wanted that requirement. The thing was - they insisted that my Revox PR99 masters were worthy though they were not at their specs...and said it must be XDR. That was a nice surprise and a huge compliment. That's all I'm saying. Their production process was unknown to me but high quality masters I understand.

 

Steve, or anyone else that knows.....will the vinyl be released on the same date as the CD? Around June 20th? thanks

 

Do White Stripes CDs get dynamically compressed compared to their LP counterparts, or not?

 

I wondered the same thing. I suspect they do. Don't they all, anymore?

 

YES. The 'Elephant' cd sounded nothing like the vinyl.

 

Thanks, Pinknik and posieflump, for confirming my suspicions!! It always made sense to me that it would work that way!

And yes, there WAS a problem with many first gen XDR tapes coming out with hardly any treble and being very bassy.

My theory on this was because of the toneburst calibration at the start of the tape - you know where a frequency grating is recorded onto the start of the tape and played back by a sync head to adjust the EQ.

What I imagine is very likely is that the mid-high to high frequency tones, being pre-emphasised with Dolby, caused bias sidebands to be recorded and played back, which digitally analysed gave the impression to the calibration circuitry of a tape with abnormally high treble response, and therefore the EQ circuit brought down the upper end of the spectrum to compensate. Certainly, you can hear sibilance on many of the "premium ferric" XDR tapes at the upper end of the toneburst, whereas later ones seemed to have this sibilance filtered out (perhaps they decided to put it 'pre-Dolby' rather than post) - and of course second gen XDR tapes had no toneburst at all, and I imagine a standard EQ curve was set for entire duplication runs.